Conventionally, crude oils are often described as being composed of a variety of boiling ranges. Lower boiling range compounds in a crude oil correspond to naphtha or kerosene fuels. Intermediate boiling range distillate compounds can be used as diesel fuel or as lubricant base stocks. If any higher boiling range compounds are present in a crude oil, such compounds are considered as residual or “resid” compounds, corresponding to the portion of a crude oil that is left over after performing atmospheric and/or vacuum distillation on the crude oil.
Solvent deasphalting is a commonly used refinery process for processing of challenged and/or heavy oil feeds, such as resid fractions produced after distillation of a crude oil. Conventional solvent deasphalting configurations can be used to convert a heavy oil feed into a deasphalted oil fraction and a deasphalter residue or “rock” fraction. Unfortunately, achieving desired product qualities for both the deasphalted oil and the rock can pose difficulties. One of the main goals of solvent deasphalting can be to upgrade a challenged fraction, such as a vacuum resid, to a deasphalted oil. The deasphalted oil can then be suitable for processing to form, for example, lubricant base oils or distillate fuels. However, performing solvent deasphalting to form an upgraded deasphalted oil can tend to result in formation of a rock fraction that is not compatible for blending with vacuum gas oils. This incompatibility can pose challenges for finding a high value end use for the resulting rock fraction.
Some configurations for performing deasphalting to form three deasphalting products are also known. The third product typically corresponds to a product with intermediate quality relative to deasphalted oil and rock. This intermediate product can be referred to as a resin product.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,296,959 and U.S. Patent Application Publication 2013/0026063 describe configurations for performing solvent deasphalting to form a deasphalted oil product, a resin product, and a pitch product. The resin product is formed by passing the deasphalted oil through a resin settler. The deasphalting solvent is then separately removed from the resin product and the deasphalted oil product. The formation of the additional resin product is described as being beneficial for reducing the severity required for hydroprocessing of the deasphalted oil product and/or for reducing the amount of coke formed during further processing of the pitch product.
It would be beneficial to identify additional strategies for processing of challenged fractions that can allow for increased production of higher value products while maintaining desired product qualities for the resulting products.